1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates an electronic still camera with a printer incorporated thereinto, and more particularly to an electronic still camera having a loading chamber for holding recording materials for the printer.
2. Background Arts
Portable electronic still cameras are widely used, which convert an optical image of a subject to an electric image signal through a CCD image sensor or the like, and convert the image signal to digital image data. The image data may be written in a memory for each frame, and may be read out from the memory. The electronic still camera is provided with a display panel, mostly an LCD panel, that functions either as an electronic viewfinder for displaying moving images of the subject in a real time fashion or as a monitor for displaying still images of the frames written in the memory. Based on the digital image written in the memory, the images photographed by the electronic still camera may be displayed on an external display device, such as a home TV or a personal computer, or hard copies of the photographed images may be printed through an external printing device.
In order to make it possible to get hard copies of the images photographed by the electronic still camera without any external device, an electronic still camera with a printing function has been suggested, for example, in WO99/21055. In this type of electronic still camera, an image is printed onto a self-developing type photo film unit, called an instant film unit. Therefore, the electronic still camera of this type has an optical printer section and a film pack chamber for holding an instant film pack that contains a plurality of instant photo film units in a stack, in addition to those elements which are necessary for the camera function.
In view of portability and handiness, the electronic still camera with printer should be able to use batteries as its power source, like other cameras. Since the printer section and the film pack chamber take a relatively large space in the electronic still camera, the electronic still camera with printer would have an enlarged size in order to load a power source of a sufficiently large capacity as compared to conventional electronic still cameras with no printer. Largeness would damage handiness of the electronic still camera. So it is difficult to allocate a sufficient space for the power source batteries in the electronic still camera with printer. But a small capacity power source will run down soon, because the electronic still camera consumes a remarkably large amount of electric power for driving the CCD image sensor and the LCD panel, in comparison with conventional analog cameras that directly photograph pictures on photographic film.